The present invention relates to communications systems facilitating operation, control and monitoring of devices such as appliances, meters, television sets, computers, etc., and for accessing externally provided services such as telephone and television.
The control of locally distributed systems such as building systems has been undertaken in connection with commonly used computer networks and business software. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,212,078 to Games et al., which discloses a wired network, U.S. Pat. No. 4,429,299 to Kabat et al., which discloses the use of AC power wiring to transmit RF communications to remote controllers, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,440,301 to Evans and U.S. Pat. No. 5,476,221 to Seymour, which disclose control using a combination of wired and wireless communications.
Unfortunately, centralized wireless control systems for locally distributed devices have not been widely utilized, largely because systems having sufficient range normally are subject to regulations and licensing requirements that are prohibitively expensive. Also, systems that are sufficiently powerful to be used in widely distributed installations are unnecessarily expensive in smaller installations. Further, there is limited availability of RF carrier frequencies, and potential interference with other nearby systems that might be operational.
It is also known to provide increased data rates with parallel processing in a wired network environment, without requiring an expensive switching system, using multiple network connections and message passing software such as Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM).
However, none of the networking systems of the prior art has proven entirely satisfactory, exhibiting one or more of the following disadvantages:                1. They are excessively expensive;        2. They have insufficient bandwidth for certain devices;        3. They are ineffective in serving multiple devices;        4. They are unreliable; and        5. They are difficult to use.        
Thus there is a need for a wireless communication system that overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art.